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OTTAWA - The Supreme Court has delivered a split advisory ruling in a case involving the regulation of in vitro fertilization, cloning and the creation of human-animal hybrids.

While the ruling is technically only an advisory opinion, it has the effect of striking down several sections of the Assisted Human Reproduction Act.

Quebec, supported by Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, challenged portions of the law that deal with the regulation of health services.

In a ruling split several ways, the nation's highest court has ruled some sections of the federal law go too far and breach provincial jurisdiction.

The nine Supreme Court justices issued three distinct judgments, arguing with each other on which parts of the law are constitutional and which are not. Determining which provisions stand and which fall requires adding up the decisions of the quarrelling justices.

The practical effect of the combined rulings is the federal government's attempt to require permits from doctors engaged in assisted human reproduction is unconstitutional and effectively struck down.

The ruling also strikes down sections of the law that require a national information management system for assisted human reproduction activities.

The court rejected the federal government's arguments that it has the authority to regulate in vitro fertilization and other reproductive technologies because they are novel.

The court called that view "incompatible with the federal nature of Canada," adding that it would "upset the constitutional balance of powers in the field of health."

Most of the law, passed in 2004, will remain in place. The provinces never challenged the power of the federal government to ban cloning or the creation of human-animal hybrids, a scientific practice that is is used for research purposes in Britain.

Despite the ban on chimeras, or human-animal hybrids, one of the provisions struck down (section 11) deals with transgenic manipulation and so each province will now deal with what could turn into a very controversial issue.

Transgenics involves the mixing of parts of the genome from different species, meaning human and non-human.

"We're not sure where that will go," said Don Hutchinson with the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada an intervener in the case.

Hutchinson called the striking down of the section dealing with transgenics troubling and is also worried about the court striking down regulations on the destruction of embryos.

"We certainly regard human life as beginning at conception, so those embryos are human life," he said.